James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, PCDLFRS (6 January 1673 in Dewsall, Herefordshire – 9 August 1744 in Cannons) was the first of fourteen children of the 8th Baron Chandos and Elizabeth Barnard. Three days after his father's death on 16 October 1714, when he became 9th Baron Chandos, he was created Earl of Carnarvon, and he was subsequently created Duke of Chandos in 1719. He was a member of parliament for Hereford from 1698 to 1714.[1]

On 2 February 1695, Brydges married Mary Lake, daughter of Sir Thomas Lake (of Cannons, Middlesex) and Rebecca Langham. She died on 15 September 1712. The couple had two children who survived childhood:

Brydges built a magnificent house "at vast expense"[2] at Cannons, an estate near Edgware in Middlesex. There Brydges ran through several architects prominent in the English Baroque. He began in 1713 with William Talman, whom he dismissed in favour of John James in 1714; James had partly executed his designs before James Gibbs succeeded him in 1715. Howard Colvin (ref) concludes that the south and east elevations, as well as the chapel, were the designs of Gibbs. Brydges dismissed Gibbs in 1719, and completed the house under the supervision of John Price[3] and, in 1723–25, Edward Shepherd. Cannons was demolished in 1747. On its site, now incorporated in Greater London, is Canons Park.

Brydges is said to have contemplated the construction of a private road across his own lands between this place and his never completed house in Cavendish Square, London, probably also designed by Gibbs.[4]

Alexander Pope, who in his Moral Essays (Epistle to the Earl of Burlington) was alleged to have ridiculed Cannons under the guise of Timon's Villa, later referred to the Duke in the line, "Thus gracious Chandos is belov'd at sight"; but Jonathan Swift, less complimentary, called him "a great complier with every court". The poet was caricatured by Hogarth for his supposed servility to Chandos.[1] Pope published a denial of his alleged satire of the Duke's estate, in which he said that the estate of the poem "differs in every particular from" Chandos's. According to Pope biographer Maynard Mack, Chandos thereafter assured Pope by letter that he believed him, i.e. that the Epistle to Burlington was not intended as a satire of his estate. The malice, indeed, was on the part not of Pope, but of the insinuators and slanderers, the hack writers whom Pope had ridiculed as dunces in his Dunciad; Mack calls the affair a "falsehood of considerable damage to [Pope's] character".

His third wife, who survived him, moved to Shaw House, Berkshire.
The Dowager Duchess of Chandos, the widow of the 1st Duke, died in 1750 at Shaw House.

Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in a letter, dated Sandleford, 21 December 1750 to Miss Anstey, wrote: "My dear Miss Anstey, ... A little before I went to London I lost my very good neighbour, the Dutchess of Chandos, a stroke of the palsy carried her off in a few days : her bodily pains were great, but her mind felt the serenity that gilds the evening of a virtuous life. She quitted the world with that decent fare-well which people take of it, who rather consider it as a place in which they are to impart good than to enjoy it Her character has made a great impression on me, as I think her a rare instance that age could not make conceited and stiff, nor retirement discontented, nor virtue inflexible and severe..."[10]

In a letter to Mrs. Donnellan dated Sandleford, 30 December 1750, Mrs. Montagu continued, "My rich neighbours are dull, and my poor ones are miserable ... The Dutchess of Chandos is greatly missed by the poor in this rigorous season. There is a family at Donnington Castle who are very generous and charitable, but nothing can entirely avail in a part of the world where manufacture decays; daily labour must give daily bread; occasional alms like medicine to the diseased, but can hardly procure constant health. To make the poor happy one must make them industrious..."[10]

C. H. and M. I. Collins Baker, 1949. The Life and Circumstances of James Brydges,: First Duke of Chandos, Patron of the Liberal Arts (Oxford University: Clarendon Press). Still the standard work on Chandos and Cannons

(Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke) 1935. Letters of Henry St. John to James Brydges (Harvard University Press)

John Robert Robinson, The princely Chandos, a memoir of James Brydges, paymaster-general to the forces abroad during the most brilliant part of the Duke of Marlborough's military ... afterwards the first Duke of Chandos